Congressman Tim Ryan gives Democrats a Fighting Chance in Ohio
By: Joseph Brusgard
Date: September 17th
The 2022 Senate Election is poised to be one of the most competitive in recent memory, and neither party has seized a clear edge in our national Senate Forecast. The primary battleground that will determine the winner is likely to be centered on five states. Democratic incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and New Hampshire, and the Republican-controlled open Senate seat in Pennsylvania. However, beyond those five, Democrats have an intriguing set of opportunities to grow their majority, holding a roughly one in three shot of a successful upset in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Ohio.
New! The Ohio Senate Forecast
We just launched our first every full page Senate interactive for the Ohio Senate Race. Now, you can see how Tim Ryan and Morgan Harper matchup against the top four Republican contenders for the Senate. Features polling, projections, interactive maps, and approval ratings. Updated daily
For those that followed the 2020 election closely, the Buckeye State might be a surprising addition to the list. Ohio did, after all, vote for President Trump by more than 8% in the last two presidential elections. However, Ohio historically has been the nation’s bellwether state, successfully picking the winner of the Presidential election all but twice in every presidential election since 1960. The Republican party has seized the upper hand in recent years and retains a 66% chance of holding on to outgoing Senator Rob Portman’s seat. Nonetheless, voters in Ohio remain far more likely to split their ticket than the rest of the nation. In 2020, Ohio was 9th out of 50 states in the average difference between their vote in the presidential election, and their vote for congressional candidates.
In other words, there are more than a few Ohioans that remain swing voters - and that provides a golden opportunity for a Senate upset. It’s unlikely that the Democratic party will outright win Ohio in the Congressional or Gubernatorial elections , but it’s entirely viable that they can overperform in the Senate, where current polling shows them to be extremely competitive. That would be a repeat of 2018, when Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown won reelection by 6%, in the very same year that the Republican Governor, Mike DeWine, won by 4%.
Democratic Primary
Senate Forecast
In 2020, RacetotheWH was one of the nation’s most accurate forecast, correctly calling over 93% of states right in the Senate and Presidential elections.
The frontrunner for the Democratic primary, Tim Ryan, is a Democrat in the model of both Sherrod Brown, and former Democratic Senator Howard Metzenbaum. He’s a blue-collar Democrat, running on “cutting workers in on the deal”. Ryan will have to overcome a challenge from liberal stalwart Morgan Harper, who worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. However, Ryan remains the clear frontrunner in the primary.
Ryan enjoys broad support from mayors, state representatives, former Governor Ted Strickland, and more prominently, Hilary Clinton. He represents a region in Ohio where Democrats have lost considerable ground, and he has bonafide anti-establishment credentials that could prove beneficial in the general election, based on his vocal challenge to Nancy Pelosi for the speakership in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Ryan also has an excellent record of outperforming the party in past elections. In 2016, he won re-election by over 35% (67.7% to 32.3%), while Hillary Clinton only won his congressional district by 6%.
However, the odds are still overall in the Republican party’s favor as a result of the state's rightward drift in recent years. Even Tim Ryan saw his support decline considerably in the last election, and he only outperformed Joe Biden by 1% in 2020. Moreover, he faces the challenge of running in a midterm election, halfway through the first term of a Democratic President. History shows that the party out of power tends to do better in midterms. There’s a chance the Republican party might blow their chance - they have an approval rating that is currently over 30% more negative than positive. But that remains a possibility, not a probability.
Republican Primary
In contrast to the Democrats, the Republican primary is a competitive free for all, with each candidate doing everything in their power to win the support of President Trump. The leader at this stage is former State Treasurer Josh Mandel. This is his third time running for the Senate, coming up short by 6% in 2012 against Democrat Sherrod Brown, and dropping out in the 2018 primary. In our 2022 Senate Primary tracker, Mandel has been leading the polls and the fundraising race.
Mandel faces his two toughest challenges from Jane Timken and J.D. Vance. Timken is the former chair of the Ohio Republican Party, with broad connections in the party, and has racked up the most endorsements. There’s also J.D. Vance, an author, venture capitalist, and a favorite of Tucker Carlson. His campaign has been bankrolled by billionaire donor Peter Thiel. At this stage, that’s a big asset to his campaign and has helped him get his message out, but it could become a weakness later on, in a party that is increasingly skeptical of big donors and political elites. The dark horses are Mike Gibbons, a banker who overperformed all expectations in the 2018 Senate Primary, and Bernie Moreno, a car dealer that has raised $2 million, mostly from individual donations.
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ
There’s a genuine risk that Republicans' race to the rightmost corners of the primary could cost them seriously in the general election. J.D. Vance and Josh Mandel have been particularly aggressive lately, making some pretty extreme statements about elections, vaccine mandates, and refugees. As top Democratic strategist David Axelrod has pointed out, Republicans face an impossible dilemma in 2022. The very political message that best positions them to win a Republican primary can make it far harder to win in a general election.
The Political Landscape
Our Senate Forecast shows Democrats have a 32% chance of winning the election in Ohio. If Ryan is going to win, he’s going to need strong Democratic turnout, and find new support that eluded Joe Biden in 2020. The state of Ohio now leans 12% towards Republicans compared to the national popular vote in the last few cycles. This makes it clear that Democrat's in the state cannot simply choose between turning out black voters and overperforming with white working-class voters. They are almost certainly going to need to do both. Ryan will also seek to ensure that Democrat's gains with white college-educated voters endure beyond the Trump era.
One of the places he may be best positioned to do so is in the suburban counties across the state like Delaware County, located right outside Columbus. It’s one of the fastest-growing counties in the state, and it has been shifting from a Republican stronghold to a political battlefield. Joe Biden cut this deficit considerably and won about 46% of the vote in 2020. If Ryan can win in places like Delaware county, his chances of winning will rise considerably.
This race could provide some insight into the political future of the Buckeye State. If Democrats can build a robust lead in suburban districts to go along with their edge in the cities, Democrats can potentially claw their way back and once again make Ohio the fiercely competitive state it was for generations. If they fail to do so, then Ohio will likely go the way of Missouri, another former bellwether state that is now thoroughly dominated by the Republican party.
Another key political terrain will be in Appalachia, in counties like Mahoning County. Mahoning County is within Tim Ryan’s congressional district, and it’s a microcosm of the white-working class counties that have trended away from Democrats across the country. The Republican party managed to win a majority in Mahoning for the first time since 1972 in the Presidential election, but Ryan still was able to hold on to the county. If Ryan can repeat that performance across the region in places where he doesn’t have a long relationship with those voters, than he could recreate the coalition that boosted Sherrod Brown to re-election in 2018.
For the entirety of the 2022 Senate Forecast, keep your eyes peeled to RacetotheWH. We just launched a new full-page Ohio Senate Forecast. It’s the first in a series of state-specific interactive features that will be launched in the weeks and months to come. It showcases data-drive infographics showing the state of the race, including break downs of the ten potential matchups, the current polling, the chance of winning for both parties, and interactive maps showcasing support by each region. You can also see how the candidates are performing with different demographic groups of voters.
Meanwhile, we are also tracking the chance of both parties to win the Senate in our national Senate Forecast. For 2021, you can follow our projections for the highly competitive Virginia Governor Race, and the New Jersey election. We’re also featuring an approval rating map showing Joe Biden’s support in every state and following the polling in every senate primary.
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